Whatever Came My Way
by Pinkie Tuscadaro
Summary: Ellie turns up in Europe looking for Craig.
1. Chapter 1

Ashley didn't nag me about the meds anymore, not like she used to. When I remembered I took them. I remembered now, in the bathroom of this hotel in France with the wallpaper that looked like it was at least a hundred years old and the funny outlets. The outlet things that you plug stuff into? It's all different in Europe, and DVD's don't work in their DVD players. And they drive on the wrong side of the road, or we do. And the French they speak here is different from the more familiar Canadian French. Not that I know that much of it. I mean, I can kind of get by asking for coffee or the bathroom but I can't discuss anything real in French. Not that it matters anyway.

"Hey, hon, want some wine?" Ashley calling to me from the hotel room, and I know she's sitting at the little table with the wine glasses in front of her. Calling me hon like we've been married ten years or something. I popped my pill into my mouth and swallowed it down with a cup of water from the sink, and it tasted vaguely like metal. I had to take these pills or I'd go crazy. I was crazy.

"Yeah," I told her, coming out and looking at her in that slip of a dress and her toenails painted this dark red, and her hair falling over her shoulder. I shouldn't really drink all that much, not with the heavy duty psych meds I was taking, but I didn't care. Drinking made me feel good and so did cocaine and pot and speed and all the other drugs I did. Whatever came my way. Rehab was just a joke. What all the veteran rehab patients told me, their bleary eyes and lined faces making sure I knew they were telling the truth, they said, 'next time, don't get caught,'

But it was just one glass of wine, and the way Ashley was laughing I guessed she'd already had one or two herself. I didn't lecture her about drinking or taking a bump of coke or shooting heroin like she did in the back of that club with a junkie named Jacque. We didn't lecture each other. We were too busy having fun.

I liked drinking because there was no paranoia and no hyperness and I just felt better about things. Things weren't such a big deal. But I didn't like it because I really could only have one or two drinks. More than that and they mixed with my meds and I was sick, hugging the sides of the toilet and swearing I'd never drink again.

Then the wine bottle was empty and Ashley was laying on the bed, reminding me a little bit of that time in the hotel room in grade 11. But things were different now. She was an adult and I'd been broken so many times that maybe I was a man. I licked my lips and headed toward her, and she smiled a slow drunk smile at me. I dove into her.

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Up on stage, the only place I ever really wanted to be anymore. I played the guitar and sang, wondering how much English this audience knew. It seemed sometimes that the whole world knew English. Ashley played the piano and her voice rose over mine and then dipped low to mix with it, and our voices created that harmony. I smiled at her and winked, and she smiled back, that rare smile I'd only seen a few times and it makes my heart feel overloaded with blood.

Backstage, dripping with sweat, so tired I can feel it. I swallowed hard, tasting the old cigarettes and the last joint I'd smoked, the heavy French meal I'd eaten hours before the show. I didn't know where Ash was. Maybe in some bathroom stall tapping a vein.

"Craig?" A soft voice, so softly questioning, so softly familiar. I looked up and into Ellie's eyes.

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"Ellie?" I didn't know if I was happy to see her or not. I'd kind of thought she was gone, like gone in the past. I'd hurt her and she wrote me off, and she was right to do that. I didn't blame her. I'd never been good to her or for her.

"What are you doing here?" I said, and she looked down. Her red hair was straight and hanging over her shoulders. What was she doing here?


	2. Chapter 2

"Ellie?" I said, pausing in mid swig of my water. This back stage room was small, the walls painted black. There were some crackers and folded meats on a card table against one wall, an old couch, and the wooden chair I was sitting in.

"Craig," she said, my name loaded with all kinds of meaning. That was a girl thing. All of them could do that, Ashley and Manny and Ellie, they'd say my name and it was weird. It was loaded.

"What are you doing here?" I said, not sure about how I was feeling about her being here. I was kind of not happy about it. I knew I hurt her, I know. But I was off my meds and high and overdosing on coke. I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind to be putting other people first. But I lowered my head, thinking of that other backstage, kissing her, my mind ticking away the whole time, 'don't call Joey,'

"I, well, I don't really know. I wasn't thinking about it. I decided to come and find you, and it was so far away I just came,"

She was twisting her hands the way she did. I remembered that from our summer together. She stood on one foot, kind of leaning. I knew all of her postures, all of her little habits. I knew she learned things about me that summer, but I learned about her, too. Man, Ellie always just made me feel so bad. I'd destroyed that friendship. But now here she was, her dark eyes under her straight red hair boring into me.

I calculated the cost for her, the cost of coming here. The plane ticket to France, missing those days of school, explaining it all to that Jesse guy or whoever she was seeing now. Was I worth all that?

"Ellie," Ashley wandered in, her cheeks red from drinking something. Bloody Mary's, scotch on the rocks, manhattens.

"Hi, Ash," Ellie said, looking down, looking shy. Ashley came over and hugged her, and I saw Ellie's black nail polish when she hugged her back.

"What are you doing here!" Ashley said, and Ellie gave me a look. The look said what was about to come out of her mouth was a lie.

"Uh, well, I came to see you guys,"

"Great! It's so good to see you!" Ashley was gushing, and I realized she had no clue. She didn't know about Ellie liking me or whatever. That seemed weird. Sometimes I felt like Ashley knew everything I knew. Sometimes I forgot we were separate people. So I ducked my head, finished my mini bottled water, and listened to them talk.

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We were waiting Ashley out. We waited her out through the dinner at the Thai place. It seemed funny that they had restaurants like that in foreign countries. It seemed like every restaurant would just be French. But they had Chinese and Japanese and Indian and all of that, just like Toronto.

We waited her out through the quick walking tour of the tourists spots, through the drinks at the outside café's. She was smiling and laughing and getting drunk and I could feel the waiting, felt the weight of whatever it was Ellie had come all this way to say.


End file.
